Digitizing operational checklists on the factory floor

Context

The company, in the mining and ore processing sector, runs three shifts with more than 200 operators spread across the production line, maintenance and internal logistics. Each shift required filling out safety, environmental compliance and operational quality checklists, printed on A4 paper and handed to the supervisor at the end of the shift.

Internal and external audits (ISO 14001 and NR-22, the Brazilian occupational safety and health standard for mining) demanded quick access to any checklist from the last 12 months. The cost of organizing, digitizing and storing this volume exceeded 40 hours a month of administrative work, and even so, 3 to 5 checklists went missing each month.

Challenge

The operations director’s initial request was to "cut the paper". In practice, the real scope involved four interconnected problems:

1. Capture: operators needed to fill out the checklist in an area without stable Wi-Fi, with a signature drawn on the screen and the ability to attach a photo of the equipment.
2. Approval: the supervisor had to validate in real time and escalate to the manager whenever a nonconformity arose.
3. Audit: quick lookup by operator, shift, period or equipment, without having to open 300 PDF files.
4. Integration: the data had to feed the company’s existing corporate Power BI, without duplicating the source.

The critical constraint was the deadline: the next ISO audit was scheduled for 45 days after kickoff. Missing that deadline meant renewing the paper-based contingency for another quarter.

Solution

We delivered a solution of three integrated layers, using only standard connectors (SharePoint, Teams, approvals) covered by the Microsoft 365 licenses the operators already had, with no additional licensing cost.

Capture layer: Power Apps (Canvas App)

A mobile-first app with a dynamic form (14 critical items and 22 optional ones per equipment type), offline support with a local queue (SaveData/LoadData), native camera and a signature drawn on the screen. The app runs in the Power Apps mobile app installed on the Android tablets already in use on the factory floor; with the app open, pending records are sent as soon as the tablet finds a signal.

Orchestration layer: Power Automate

The main flow performs three tasks: it saves the checklist in SharePoint with metadata, sends the approval request to the shift supervisor through Teams (with the Approve/Reject buttons of the Approvals app) and escalates to the manager when there is a nonconformity item flagged as "critical". Every critical action has error handling, and the flow writes a log to a dedicated list so it can audit itself.

Persistence layer: SharePoint

A corporate list with a 5-year Microsoft Purview retention label that declares each checklist a record and extends retention to the attached photos; permissions by Microsoft Entra ID security group; indexed columns (shift, equipment, operator and date) for fast queries; and reading by the existing Power BI through a dataflow with the SharePoint Online list connector. Auditors can search across 7 combined filters in under 2 seconds.

Stack used

• Canvas App (Power Apps)
• Power Automate (cloud flows)
• SharePoint Online
• Microsoft Teams (approvals)
• Power BI (consumption)
• Microsoft Entra ID (single sign-on)

Results

We measured a baseline in the two weeks prior to rollout and reassessed after 30 days in production. The figures below have been changed for confidentiality, as the note at the top explains.

• -64%Average shift closing time: from 42 min to 15 min.
• ZeroChecklists lost in the 1st month (before: 3 to 5 a month).
• -80%Lookup time during audits: from ~15 min/record to ~3 min.
• -40h/monthAdministrative hours freed up for higher-value tasks.
• 100%Of records with an audit trail, which supports ISO 14001 audits.
• R$ 0Additional licensing cost: the app uses only standard connectors, covered by Microsoft 365.